Study: Flagler Hospital Among Top 5% in the Nation for Patient Safety for the 5th Year in a Row

05/28/2010

For the fifth consecutive year,Flagler Hospital
was identified as a recipient of the
HealthGrades Patient Safety Excellence Award™, indicating that its patient safety ratings are in the top 5% of U.S. hospitals, in a recent study by HealthGrades, the leading independent healthcare ratings organization. Flagler Hospital is one of only 238 hospitals in the country to receive this designation.

The seventh annual HealthGrades Patient Safety in American Hospitals study analyzed nearly 40 million hospitalization records from approximately 5,000 hospitals nationwide that participate in the Medicare program. Participation in the HealthGrades study is not voluntary, and hospitals cannot choose to opt out of the analysis.

If all hospitals performed at the level of Patient Safety Excellence Award™ hospitals like Flagler Hospital, approximately 218,572 patient safety events and 22,590 Medicare deaths could have been avoided while saving the U.S. approximately $2.1 billion in excess costs from 2006 through 2008.

“On behalf of HealthGrades I’d like to congratulate Flagler Hospital for a track record of patient safety that is among the best in the nation,” said Rick May, MD, a vice president at HealthGrades and co-author of the study. “Hospitals like Flagler Hospital are setting benchmarks of superior performance that we would like to see other hospitals emulate.”

The seventh annual HealthGrades Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study applies methodology developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to identify the incidence rates of 15 patient safety indicators among Medicare patients at virtually all of the nation's nearly 5,000 nonfederal hospitals. Additionally, HealthGrades applied its methodology using 12 patient safety indicators to identify the best-performing hospitals, or Patient Safety Excellence Award™ Hospitals, which represent the top 5% of all U.S. hospitals. HealthGrades developed this award to give patients more information about choosing a hospital.